da Agora Gallery, New York

Pino Lavecchia’s oil paintings on canvas combine fragments of art historical imagery with banal signifiers of modern life to create surreal works that blur space and time. Ancient Greek and Roman statuary populates his canvases alongside both historical architectural renderings and heaps of trash, the odd juxtapositions creating a narrative in which the future is inherently inflected by the past. The artist derives his technique from the Renaissance Masters, drawing, drafting, veiling, and retouching his works to achieve aesthetic perfection and technical complexity.

Lavecchia’s Anthropology 4 images a figure reminiscent of Greek statuary, nude and in contrapposto. Broken wine bottles litter one side of the canvas, painted with an almost trompe l’oeil effect in a stark juxtaposition of painting styles and art historical references. In Anthropology 5, the artist renders the Winged Victory of Samothrace amid other sculptural fragments. The Parthenon is visible in the background alongside a pale, waning moon. Finally, Anthropology 6 depicts what appears to be a Roman bust amid debris on a beach. The object appears to have washed ashore like the other discarded detritus that served a function in a different time and place.